Pig Curling Review

The Good

Some of the obstacles make you think critically to get past.

The Bad

It says it’s curling, but it’s nowhere near a curling game.

Pig Curling is as much about curling as Madden 12 is about Monopoly

Alright folks, here’s the deal. I dig curling, like, alot. Way more than anyone from America should. Most of us like football, I like curling. It’s probably not a big surprise that I don’t get to enjoy my beloved game in the digital format too often. I’ve even imported Japanese games to get my curling fix. So while hesitant about the “pig” part of Pig Curling, I was more than willing to deal with it if it meant touch screen sweeping goodness. Ultimately though, I came away crushed and disappointed.

I’m not going to go into crazy specifics about curling, but here’s the jist. Two teams take turns throwing 50 odd pound weights down a sheet of ice trying to get them to stop in a target area. The rocks are released with a slight spin that will make the rock curl (get it?) by rubbing against the friction of the ice. The sweeping melts the ice, reducing friction and making it curl less. This creates a back and forth between the teams of perfect placement and keen strategy. Pig Curling has you toss pigs towards a target flying through wood blocks and off rubber bands. So, like not really the same thing.

You’ll need to land a certain number of pigs in the target area to complete each level, with 40 levels in all. The obstacles are all over the map, from the aforementioned wood and rubber bands, to pins and steel. There are different sized pigs that have their own weights and speed to them as well. So you’ll pull back and swipe forward to toss the pig. That’s really it.

Strangely I found the controls to be a little heavy, and it took a monster swipe of the finger to get the pigs moving at any speed. If you had a heavy one to toss, then you can just forget about aiming. Just swipe as hard as possible and “maybe” it’ll make it down ice.

What they needed to call this game is Top Down Stripped-Down Angry Birds, though in all honesty that would still be kinda false advertising, because while the game is ok, let’s not kid ourselves… it’s no Angry Birds. It wants to be, with the physics and weird animal inclusions being tossed through nonsensical obstacles, but it’s just not.

If the game were called something else and didn’t have the background of a curling ice sheet, I would’ve just called it a ho-hum puzzler. But what really bugs me is that, in spite of the no reason at all inclusion of the pigs, there’s nothing about this game that makes it a curling game. It’s like calling a game Dog Baseball and then load up a bad version of Ticket to Ride with a baseball diamond in the background. People looking for a curling game are going to want to try it, only to be left feeling misled and sort of hoodwinked. And for everyone else… meh. It’s just too generic to really be worth your time.